Statistics Canada Reports II

[ssiguy]

I don't think Edmonton is a "bad" city.

If you want to live an affordable suburban life, and can handle the winters, then you will do fine in Edmonton. Yes, it has a high crime rate by Canadian standards but most of that is downtown where few people go unless they work there.

The city enjoys a great park system with the river valley, a very good university, a good and quickly improving transit system, and a thriving arts & culture scene. Of course it has all the big box and malls anyone in suburbia could ask for. If you don't ask much from your city then Edmonton is perfectly comfortable EXCEPT if you want a downtown lifestyle.

It's downtown is as dead as a doorknob and quite unattractive. The issue is that a city's downtown is it's soul and not just another area. Without a vibrant core, the city is more just a large collection houses, highways, and big box stores. The downtown of any city is it's beating heart and Edmonton's is on life support.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by ue

Something I've thought about with Winnipeg is that none of its main streets are at the level of Whyte Ave, let alone the top tier ones in Calgary, but they are so much more interesting. Winnipeg is self-deprecating, but it uses towards more productive ends rather than just whining about not being Calgary. Winnipeg doesn't care if its cold and boring, it has better river skating than Ottawa, better winter festivals than "Festival City" Edmonton, and its citizens are better at dressing for winter and even making it fashion. I've noticed an uptick in Inuit and Indigenous-made parkas in Winnipeg. There's a scrappiness to Winnipeg because it knows that it gets overlooked and has to fend for itself. Edmonton is too fat from petrol to know how to do that. The result is that even if Winnipeg is fairly suburban and car-centric, there's still a pridefulness and making the most out of it that Edmontonians lack. Look at Wolseley -- the Four Squares are colourful, the street boulevards have vegetable gardens, in the winter there are lots of elaborate front lawn family skating rinks, snow sculptures, etc while in the summer people get out the trampolines, have the tall grass prairie gardens, etc. In similarly old, "crunchy" areas in Edmonton like the Highlands or perhaps Mill Creek/Ritchie there isn't this desire for residents to take the same pride and make the neighbourhood feel vibrant even when there aren't a ton of pedestrians meandering.

Edmonton offers a lot of great things and has its own appeals, but they are largely outside of the world of urbanism, aside from the odd progressive planning headline. I think a lot of people put their hopes on the Ice District and while it did eat up a huge swath of brownfield, the CRUs are just banks. The tallest building in Canada outside the GTA has a vacant food court at the bottom, but I guess Brookfield Place can't say much about that even if it's the hotter one. I'd argue that Winnipeg's True North Square is a similarly styled development to Ice District, albeit smaller scaled, and despite nobody knowing what the Sutton Hotel will look like, is more successful on the ground. But Winnipeg's a real city, not what happens when you add a million people to Moncton. There are no abandoned warehouse raves in Edmonton because there are no abandoned warehouses to conduct raves in and if there were nobody would be brave enough to do anything about it.

While I don't have any stake in this Edmonton vs. Winnipeg debate; as an aside I do have to say that I'm very impressed by some of the projects coming out of Winnipeg. There are some great local architects doing interesting work there, and there seems to be a real progressive form of small-scale urbanism happening there. Eg, some of the stuff like this: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10597056&postcount=754

From my perspective, it's got a ways to go - still lots of parking lots and stroads downtown - but the style & scale of urban development happening in Winnipeg is more interesting and more sustainable than the more conventional stuff that seems to get built in Edmonton.

[ue]

^ 100%. And Winnipeg, like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary does have ugly infill but the median standard for quality is better than in Edmonton.

Originally Posted by Xelebes

The problem with the "desirability" isn't the real thing going on in Edmonton. It's employment centres are spread out. Some of that comes down to geographical reality due to a large river valley. Some of that is due to how the railroads were built in Edmonton. Some of that is down to simple necessity of having chemical factories nowhere near the city centre. People come to Edmonton, find work in spread out places and they realise that they have lots of options to live. One might expect a transportation crisis with it being spread out, but that simple means people live closer to their work.

Desirability of a city centre is a hobby horse of this website, but it doesn't answer the question of why house prices are so low in Edmonton.

Edmonton is a great place if you love great recreation, good amenities (both public and private, like schools, rec facilities, shopping, theatre), and want a house and don't care as much about vinyl siding and don't want to pay for parking ever. It has a desirability but it is not in urbanism. It can add as much missing middle density as it wants, its still ugly and the residents still drive everywhere. It is good for sustainability though. But yes, you are right!

[ue]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I don't think Edmonton is a "bad" city.

If you want to live an affordable suburban life, and can handle the winters, then you will do fine in Edmonton. Yes, it has a high crime rate by Canadian standards but most of that is downtown where few people go unless they work there.

The city enjoys a great park system with the river valley, a very good university, a good and quickly improving transit system, and a thriving arts & culture scene. Of course it has all the big box and malls anyone in suburbia could ask for. If you don't ask much from your city then Edmonton is perfectly comfortable EXCEPT if you want a downtown lifestyle.

It's downtown is as dead as a doorknob and quite unattractive. The issue is that a city's downtown is it's soul and not just another area. Without a vibrant core, the city is more just a large collection houses, highways, and big box stores. The downtown of any city is it's beating heart and Edmonton's is on life support.

I have to agree with you. Even a fairly urban "streetcar" suburb style where you might have a car but still walk and cycle often and take the bus to work is fairly accessible in Edmonton, which is why areas like Ritchie have popped off the way they have. Edmontonians still like their cute cafes, local doughnuts and ice cream, brewpubs, just like Calgarians and Ottawans. But a real downtown city lifestyle is only for the most delusional in Edmonton and I don't think Edmonton could look at itself without laughing if it tried to build something like Yaletown.

I think a great way of putting it is that both Winnipeg and Edmonton have downtowns that could be much better than they already are. But here's the thing, Winnipeg could catch up to Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, even Vancouver if the stars aligned because it has the bones. Edmonton could be a Calgary if it put in the work but it could never be a Vancouver. The slate is too blank and when something gets built there's a higher likelihood than not that it will be effective if disappointing to look at.

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by ue

^ 100%. And Winnipeg, like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary does have ugly infill but the median standard for quality is better than in Edmonton.



Edmonton is a great place if you love great recreation, good amenities (both public and private, like schools, rec facilities, shopping, theatre), and want a house and don't care as much about vinyl siding and don't want to pay for parking ever. It has a desirability but it is not in urbanism. It can add as much missing middle density as it wants, its still ugly and the residents still drive everywhere. It is good for sustainability though. But yes, you are right!

And I'm bringing this up because this is the original topic of this detour. People are waxing about aesthetics when they can't talk about substance. You're talking about a couple neighbourhoods when we are talking about a whole functioning city. The aesthetics are irrelevant and are defensive for taking measures which make life unaffordable/unattainable in other cities.

Perhaps people are looking for cozy high streets than they are looking for seas of urbanity, because cozy high streets make living easier than seas of urbanity. I'm talking about there being a critical problem with our notions of urbanity that is making it difficult to live in.

[ue]

Dude, sometimes conversations meander. I was giving my own thoughts and StatsCan hasn't released anything else, so what's the harm? This is not a situation that you need to police, Xelebes. If you'd rather to continue having the same conversation with the same factoids because there are no new statistics to hyperfixate on rather than let things naturally flow, then that's fine but it's your loss.

Just because something cannot be quantified into facts and figures does and requires more abstract and emotive thinking not mean it lacks substance. For the record I was not in conversation with you whatsoever and was adding to what others were saying about Edmonton with my own thoughts and perspectives. You replied to me. We were discussing different things and then you replied to me and now you're complaining I'm not on the same wavelength as you when I never was baby!

I am talking about Edmonton as an entire city. It is a culturally suburban place, whether you're in Wihkwentowin or Windermere. It has a lot of things to offer, but is severely lacking in the things that are of interest to SSP. To elaborate on this, I've provided analysis of areas in the city. Why is this so hard? Once again an Edmontonian misses the point. I have no disagreement of your analysis of Edmonton's polycentricity and have even added the progressive policy choices that have lent an affordability to Edmonton.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by ue

I think a great way of putting it is that both Winnipeg and Edmonton have downtowns that could be much better than they already are. But here's the thing, Winnipeg could catch up to Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, even Vancouver if the stars aligned because it has the bones. Edmonton could be a Calgary if it put in the work but it could never be a Vancouver.

I would disagree with this part, respectfully. The urban gap between Vancouver and whatever Canadian city is 4th is bigger than the gap between Vancouver and Toronto or Montreal above it, and certainly bigger than the gap between a Calgary, Ottawa or any other of a host of cities of a pretty big variation in size, ranging from Halifax to Quebec City. Vancouver feels like a small global city; obviously not in the same league as a major global city like New York or Tokyo, but a global city nonetheless.

There are quite a few neighbourhoods in Vancouver that I’ve never encountered in Canadian cities smaller than Vancouver, because they have a combination of density, money and a certain lore. There’s more to a city than the quantity and quality of prewar buildings. I think it would be almost impossible for a city like Winnipeg to conjure up its own version of Vancouver’s downtown peninsula, which is not just very dense and very populated, but contains within it a huge spectrum of incomes, demographics and subcultures, and is probably the smallest example of a “Manhattan”, a dense skyscraper archipelago containing a little something for everyone.

[MattBerryOfficial]

Lets get another couple of pages about how Edmonton is the worst city in Canada. Fascinating stuff.

[The mayor]

Originally Posted by MattBerryOfficial

Lets get another couple of pages about how Edmonton is the worst city in Canada. Fascinating stuff.

I lived in Edmonton for many years. It’s a great city. No need to trash another city.

[MattBerryOfficial]

Originally Posted by The mayor

I lived in Edmonton for many years. It’s a great city. No need to trash another city.

I agree. Certain posters have made it clear how they feel about Edmonton. Time to move on.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MattBerryOfficial

Lets get another couple of pages about how Edmonton is the worst city in Canada. Fascinating stuff.

The city is so awful it only grew by an estimated 24,988 people/yr on average from 2005-2025. Worst city in the entirety of Canada by far

[ue]

It's actually so funny how little interest there is in having a nuanced, critical discussion over concern of having someone's hurt feelings when I spent years on this website defending Edmonton and getting bullied worse than Chad. Grown-ass men bullying teenagers who wanted to take an interest in cities after buying Jane Jacobs and didn't know any better despite those adults knowing I was young and wasn't going to be operating at the same level as an industry insider. And now you want to come back and tell me I'm being too harsh on the city I was raised in, know like the back of my hand, and get condescended back to with boilerplate factoids from people in Ontario. Y'all would rather hear MolsonExport spout the same five anecdotes from 1994 about his time in BC than have a fresh perspective from the West and that's why the Canada forum is an endless Laurentien navelgaze.

So many Edmontonians refuse to grapple with why their city isn't taken seriously and get into this defensiveness of "but look we are growing!" and "look we are affordable" and "isn't Whyte Ave so cute?" and "please visit the river valley" and it's like yeah... once again there are a number of attractive things to do in Edmonton, Alberta but you aren't getting Outremont, you aren't getting the Glebe, you aren't even really getting the Beltline. There is a clear rationale for Edmonton's relative affordability and how that ties into its own unique desirability viz peers. And that's great. You can have a great, fulfilling life in Edmonton. But I spent a lot of time in the city trying to move the needle, trying to live that urban lifestyle (literally my original handle on SSP was Edmontonenthusiast), and it's just not something conducive to healthy living in Edmonton because you'll just get vexed and disappointed.

I am trying to have my own conversation about that based on comments from others such as ssiguy and all I'm getting is Wigs not reading enough to realize I already said what they did and Xelebes bitching about me not sticking to *his* topic despite my never initiating contact with him.

[ue]

Originally Posted by MattBerryOfficial

Lets get another couple of pages about how Edmonton is the worst city in Canada. Fascinating stuff.

If you're bored you know you can just leave right? No one is forcing you to be here! And if you have a better topic than just whining about what I have to say without adding anything meaningful, then feel free to bury my posts but until then sit down.

[ue]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I would disagree with this part, respectfully. The urban gap between Vancouver and whatever Canadian city is 4th is bigger than the gap between Vancouver and Toronto or Montreal above it, and certainly bigger than the gap between a Calgary, Ottawa or any other of a host of cities of a pretty big variation in size, ranging from Halifax to Quebec City. Vancouver feels like a small global city; obviously not in the same league as a major global city like New York or Tokyo, but a global city nonetheless.

There are quite a few neighbourhoods in Vancouver that I’ve never encountered in Canadian cities smaller than Vancouver, because they have a combination of density, money and a certain lore. There’s more to a city than the quantity and quality of prewar buildings. I think it would be almost impossible for a city like Winnipeg to conjure up its own version of Vancouver’s downtown peninsula, which is not just very dense and very populated, but contains within it a huge spectrum of incomes, demographics and subcultures, and is probably the smallest example of a “Manhattan”, a dense skyscraper archipelago containing a little something for everyone.

What I was suggesting more was that because Winnipeg and Vancouver have a similar high-quality old urbanism in their own ways, if there was ever an alternate reality where Winnipeg was able to boom to the size of Vancouver, it could have the potential to rival it in terms of urban offerings and vibrancy. It wouldn't be exactly like Vancouver (probably more like a halfway between Chicago and Minneapolis if we're being honest with more Canadian-style urbanism) but it could rival it in its own way if that ever happened.

For the record I do think this is beyond our current understandings of what is likely to unfold in Winnipeg, I'm more pointing at the fact that Winnipeg has the bones you see in older cities and so theoretically that could be filled in with modern growth/density. The only way I could see it happening is if something truly catastrophic happens south of us leading to a mass migration and Manitoba is relatively safe/stable from climate catastrophe. And even then probably not.

[giallo]

Originally Posted by ue

It's actually so funny how little interest there is in having a nuanced, critical discussion over concern of having someone's hurt feelings when I spent years on this website defending Edmonton and getting bullied worse than Chad. Grown-ass men bullying teenagers who wanted to take an interest in cities after buying Jane Jacobs and didn't know any better despite those adults knowing I was young and wasn't going to be operating at the same level as an industry insider. Y'all would rather hear MolsonExport spout the same five anecdotes from 1994 about his time in BC than have a fresh perspective from the West and that's why the Canada forum is an endless Laurentien navelgaze.

So many Edmontonians refuse to grapple with why their city isn't taken seriously and get into this defensiveness of "but look we are growing!" and "look we are affordable" and "isn't Whyte Ave so cute?" and "please visit the river valley" and it's like yeah... once again there are a number of attractive things to do in Edmonton, Alberta but you aren't getting Outremont, you aren't getting the Glebe, you aren't even really getting the Beltline. There is a clear rationale for Edmonton's relative affordability and how that ties into its own unique desirability viz peers. And that's great. You can have a great, fulfilling life in Edmonton. But I spent a lot of time in the city trying to move the needle, trying to live that urban lifestyle (literally my original handle on SSP was Edmontonenthusiast), and it's just not something conducive to healthy living in Edmonton because you'll just get vexed and disappointed.

I am trying to have my own conversation about that based on comments from others such as ssiguy and all I'm getting is Wigs not reading enough to realize I already said what they did and Xelebes bitching about me not sticking to *his* topic despite my never initiating contact with him.

I appreciate the nuanced take on your hometown. Discussions would get pretty boring on this page if all we did was circle-jerk and naval-gaze cities.

I visited downtown Edmonton back in June 2024, and I was pretty shocked by how quiet it was on a Thursday afternoon. I do feel like it has loads of potential, but the work that needs to be done is vast.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ue

What I was suggesting more was that because Winnipeg and Vancouver have a similar high-quality old urbanism in their own ways, if there was ever an alternate reality where Winnipeg was able to boom to the size of Vancouver, it could have the potential to rival it in terms of urban offerings and vibrancy.

I wonder if this really would be possible. It's not just about size. Vancouver is in an extremely good geographical location that not only tends to cause the city to grow but also shapes the urban area itself and who wants to live here. Winnipeg has room to sprawl for example while Vancouver has natural features that limit sprawl and tend to encourage more density in scenic and well-connected areas. It's one of the most naturally beautiful city locations in the world, so it attracts wealthy condo buyers in first-rate buildings.

I do think there's similarity between Vancouver and Winnipeg in the style of buildings and neighbourhoods from around 1900-1930 and Vancouver's a bit underrated for that stuff. There are some very nice landmark buildings from that era here, and there's a decent stock of medium-sized older buildings, although many of them are in a rough part of town and some are slipping away as a result.

[ue]

Vancouver has one of the most interesting collections of pre-war skyscrapers in North America IMO. The Dominion Building and Sun Tower do something different than Commerce Court North because they aren't just copying American Art Deco. However, if you want that, Vancouver still has City Hall and the Marine Building. Totally right in that it gets overshadowed by the newer stuff in a way that you don't with Winnipeg or Eastern cities. However, those grand old buildings Downtown and in East-Central core areas are some of the most special buildings in the Lower Mainland.

I agree that Vancouver, with its characteristic geography and climate and other considerations, was always going to be a different city. Even a Winnipeg with progressive densification and transport planning supporting 3 million people wouldn't look like that. However it would probably be more vibrant than Minneapolis, which is no slouch to be fair. But this bigger, more filled in Winnipeg, while a different vibe, could rise to the occasion and offer an urban quality in the range of a Vancouver even if aesthetically it works differently.

A funny thing about Winnipeg is that it is basically flat as a pancake and yet is harder to get around than Edmonton. Winnipeggers have a tendency to kneecap themselves. The Downtown Rail Yards are a barrier for the North End in a similar way that the North Shore is cut off naturally from Vancouver. There are huge river-facing sections of the city essentially cut off from each other because despite not having Calgary's hills, Edmonton's valleys, or Vancouver's water, Winnipeg just doesn't build bridges, especially if it isn't a highway or for accessing downtown. Winnipeg isn't as polycentric as Edmonton, but it is more so than Calgary, and a lot of its road network comprises of mega-stroads funnelling people from their area of the city either towards the core or the country while the neighbourhood streets don't talk to each other across these stroads because Winnipeg was a dozen different cities that didn't talk to each other fully until 1972.

[someone123]

It is interesting to think about how some city locations are just primed for development, while others happened in much larger part due to human factors like borders or industrial clusters that could have been in different locations.

You know a city will be there just by looking at a map of the terrain: Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax
Less obvious: Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary

Globally examples would be, say, NYC or Istanbul (S-tier city location, great local resources, great connections, good climate) vs. Dubai or Brasilia (F-tier, largely inhospitable).

[ue]

Originally Posted by someone123

It is interesting to think about how some city locations are just primed for development, while others happened in much larger part due to human factors like borders or industrial clusters.

You know a city will be there just by looking at a map of the terrain: Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax
Less obvious: Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary

Winnipeg too. European and Metis settlers tried moving from the Forks many times due to regular bad flooding. That's why the HBC built Lower Fort Garry further up by Selkirk. But the river confluence was such an important meeting and trading post for First Nations for millennia that traders, trappers, and settlers kept migrating back until they finally built the Red River Floodway to permanently protect the city.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ue

Winnipeg too. European and Metis settlers tried moving from the Forks many times due to regular bad flooding. That's why the HBC built Lower Fort Garry further up by Selkirk. But the river confluence was such an important meeting and trading post for First Nations for millennia that traders, trappers, and settlers kept migrating back until they finally built the Red River Floodway to permanently protect the city.

But if it were not for Canada and the US being two separate countries, would it be a natural place to ship products from one side of the continent to the other? I think you need the Canada-US border to invest much in infrastructure above Lake Superior, and there isn't much north of Winnipeg.